Introduction to New UI Features in Rollbase 5.0

In addition to backend improvements, a graphical workflow designer, responsive grid control and more UI upgrades are here in Rollbase 5.0.

We have lots of new things to share with you on the UI front for the Rollbase 5.0 release. Even though the main focus of this release was backend services changes with support for High availability (HA) and better scalability, we have been quite busy on the UI side too.

Graphical Workflow Designer

Workflow support is a key requirement of many web applications. Rollbase, as a low-code platform, now provides a graphical tool to design workflow processes with no coding.

An application designer can create workflow states and actions to transition from these states using drag and drop as well as point and click techniques. Complex workflows can be laid out manually or automatically, thanks to several built-in layout managers. Multiple zoom capabilities provide visibility into details as well as high level views.

This makes it a breeze to create applications driven by workflow processes.

Here is a screenshot with a relatively complex workflow (you can click to open in full size):

You can find more details and dive deeper into workflow design in this blog post, which focuses specifically on the graphical workflow designer.

Responsive Grid Control

The grid control allows editing child records of object relationships. For example, let’s assume we have a CRM application where a Company object has a 1 to n relationship to contacts. The grid control enables editing the list of contacts in the same form where the user edits the Company information.

In V5.0, the grid control is now fully responsive. Thus, allowing full form editing of objects and child objects in the same page on any devices. This is a very powerful feature and one of the key values of a low code platform where—by just defining objects and their relationships—one gets a sophisticated UI across devices without coding.

Here are two example screenshots each with two child objects. The child objects are contact objects. The first screenshot shows the UI on a desktop device and the second one on a smart phone device (where the first record is collapsed for the purpose of illustration):

CDN Support

We now support loading libraries from a CDN server. This will increase performance by offloading the Rollbase server. It will also provide faster page loading on the browser side due to domain sharding as well as by increasing the probability that one or more libraries are already cached in the browser from the use of other web applications.

New System Console

The new system console greatly facilitates the life of master tenant administrator. Note, this is for private cloud customers. On the rollbase.com public cloud, users do not have access to the master tenant.

It allows you to easily view, configure and manage all the Rollbase system components like servers and databases. It facilitates managing tenants and the overall system.

The new shared properties UI allows changing properties without having to physically edit the config file on the systems, and for many properties allows changing them on the fly without a restart.

The new Monitoring UI provides easy access to Jobs, Events, log files and auditing in a centralized fashion.

Other Updates

We have a long list of other very useful changes. For example, we added support for making phone calls with the phone field, centered notifications, HTTP Retry for all the outgoing calls from Rollbase.

I won’t list them all here, please check the full what’s new page in our docs, or check out the highlights.

We hope you will find this release has a lot to offer. As always, if you want to try new features as well as provide feedback on the next release before it comes out, check our early access program (eap.rollbase.com). Drop me a note, if you do not have an account.

Thierry Ciot is a Software Architect and Product Owner on Progress Rollbase. Ciot has gained a broad experience in the development of products ranging from development tools to production monitoring systems. He is using his expertise to create a low code/rapid application development platform that provides a “Yes!” user experience. He is now focusing on responsive and adaptive modern web applications for public and private clouds. He holds two patents in the memory management space.

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